My Weeded Garden

My body, my mind, my garden

When the only flowers you see are those of weeds, you marvel at their beauty and let them grow, wild and giant. You let them take over your garden until they suffocate each other. I did that. I saw flowers, rugged, that didn’t need much tending. And because they were mine, I let them take over. I let them intertwine up my legs, pin me down, secure my core into their neediness, wrap up my brain into a false sense of warmth and coziness.

Winters shook me up; the freeze sent shards of awareness that stang into my perception and my being. The hurt made me want to wish it away, and I so craved the embrace that felt safe even though the weeds’ millions of thorns embedded in my skin weighed it down in pain I thought necessary.

I shook once and felt a light release, so I started pulling. The thorns hurt more, biting where I pulled, but I carried on, in a haze, thinking I’m onto something. Thinking. Sunrays showed themselves, one by one. Revelations so tiny that could have easily gone unnoticed. Their power grew very much the same way I let them.

My garden is small. I’m humble tending to it—one footprint at a time, one thought at a time. The weeds, I’m pulling out fast, as soon as I see sprouts, knowing what they can do, what they will do if I let them. The terror guiding this subsides, though, happily, one day at a time. I catch smiles and minuscule glimpses of tenderness exploding fireworks of gratitude.

My body, my mind, my garden. I’m tending to it. Humbly and kindly. My whole universe starts here. And yes, I learned it the hard way. And yes, it was probably the only way. The ifs, the regrets, the mulling of the past have no space here, nor time.

Copyright © 2021 by Georgiana Petec. All rights reserved.

Thank you 𝘋𝘪𝘢𝘯𝘢 𝘊. for the fabulous prompts we’re showered with at Know Thyself, Heal Thyself. Thank you Vicky Prokopi for this lovely one that resonated with me.

Also, thank you all so much for reading. It means a lot.